Laud Our Ambassador -nyt19150908

LAUD OUR AMBASSADOR

Refugees from Turkey Say He Alone Prevents Massacre

SEPTEMBER 8, 1915

Special Cable to NEW YORK TIMES.
PARIS, Sept. 7-"The American Ambassador alone stands between a thousand French and British at Constantinople and death, was the tribute of two noble Scotch women traversing Paris today on their way to Glasgow after nine months detention in Turkey.

They are members of a party of six British and six French who arrived at Marseilles Sunday. They were released through the efforts of Ambassador Morgenthau. Mr. Morgentau is now working with the American Councils to repatriate the rest of the British and French in Turkey.

The women said the subjects of the Allies at first were unmolested. Then they were persecuted, until they are now liable to arrest at any moment. They instanced four French nuns and two priests who were imprisoned for seventy-four days and then declared innocent. Armenians, they declared, are being slaughtered wholesale, the massacres surprising those of 1894. At Vardemis 2,000 of all ages and both sexes were shut in a convent and burned to death.

"The Germans are absolute masters," the women said, "but a revolution is brewing and would burst if a leader appeared. The morale of the troops is had. Mutinies are spreading. Ten Turkish officers were shot in the first week of August. Coal and bread are lacking and munitions are low. The Germans admit, privately, that it is impossible to resist long unless conditions change."